Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
I'm leaving tonight's debate live chat early to make it down to my church's evening Ash Wednesday service where the pastor will remind all in attendance that "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" as we receive the ashes. The Ash Wednesday service is one of the most meaningful of the entire church calendar for me because I, despite a great hope in eternity, continually struggle with the acceptance of death.
A passage in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1993 speech "We have ceased to see the purpose" (of which we discussed a portion here) captured my attention recently, and I think it aptly speaks to why our culture is so uncomfortable with death.
And nothing so bespeaks the current helplessness of our spirit, our intellectual disarray, as the loss of a clear and calm attitude towards death. The greater his well-being, the deeper the chilling fear of death cuts into the soul of modern man. This mass fear, a fear the ancients did not know, was born of our insatiable, loud, and bustling life. Man has lost the sense of himself as a limited point in the universe, albeit one possessed of free will. He began to deem himself the center of his surroundings, adapting not himself to the world but the world to himself. And then, of course, the thought of death becomes unbearable: it is the extinction of the entire universe at a stroke.
Having refused to recognize the unchanging Higher Power above us, we have filled that space with personal imperatives, and suddenly life has become a harrowing prospect indeed.
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Dec '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
Diane, my daughter wrote a paper for her college psychology class on Religion and Psychology in the form of a short story. The assignment was to write a personal essay on the student's relationship with the idea of the Divine: fiction or non-fiction, believer or non-believer.
The title of her story is The Last Earth Girl Went To Space To Find God. It's in the form of a diary written by the last surviving human being: a few years after humankind learns that a cosmic catastrophe is going to destroy the Solar System, she's managed to board a spacecraft and is headed to the edge of the Universe, thinking that if God exists, He exists in the void into which the physical Universe is expanding.
I was so moved by her reflection on belief and mortality that I adapted it into a feature-length screenplay that's placed well in some screenwriting competitions. Writing it forced me to confront my beliefs and emotions about mortality and thus about life.
Let me know if you'd care to read it.
Nov '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
Blessings, Diane. Jesus wept at death--at the death of Lazarus whom he went on to raise from the dead. Struggling with death is normal. My mother just died in December, which was hideous. The most comforting thing during that time was the comment of a Christian friend about his own mother's death: "It is amazing that something so universal can be so nearly unbearable." As he later said to me, "It is because it was not meant to be that way."
Anyway, may you have a blessed Ash Wednesday and a blessed Lent. My church's service was tremendously meaningful to me.
Jan '11
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
I contend the underlying pathology is power.
In short, to accept death is to accept powerlessness. It's accepting the fact that we aren't God. We were either created by mere accident, as the non-believers hold, or (at best) we were created by God. Either way, it means we aren't our own creation. We either belong to no one, or to someone else ... but our life doesn't belong to us. Our life starts without our approval, it ends without consulting us, and life is merely a visitor.
The desire to "engineer" life ... to take what science tells us and apply it so we can "master" life ... is ultimately disproved whenever someone dies. The certainty of death is proof that life can't be mastered.
We can't master life. The best we can do is to ride it like a wave (if you're not a religious believer) or, like we religious folk, to be thankful for a gift we had nothing to do with.
This isn't our universe.
Dec '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
Diane,
This morning at minyan we said Kaddish for three different people. One in particular had just lost a sister a few days before.
At the end of the service, as required, he sat on the Bimah and we said the short condolence prayer.
"May the Omnipresent console you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
May they blossom forth from the city like the grass of the earth. Remember that we are but dust.
May He swallow up death forever, and may Hashem the God wipe away tears from every face and remove the scorn of His people from throughout the world, for the mouth of Hashem has spoken."
The mourner then spoke briefly about his sister. He described how she had taken care of the whole family. How loved she was by children and grandchildren. His voice trailed off when he said "She was a good girl.." and he cried. I said under my breath "I'll bet she was."
Off I went to work. It was no different then many other days I've experienced in the last 14 years since I've become religious. I've never felt I made the wrong decision.
Regards,
Jim
Edited on February 23, 2012 at 12:59pmSep '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
Diane, I always find the following passage helpful whenever I'm struggling with something much bigger than myself. Perhaps you will too.
Feb '12
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
"for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return"..Like so many blossoms in the dust..
Aug '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
"Denn wir haben hie' keine bleibende Stadt, sondern die zukünftige suchen wir."
Jun '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
The only thing that conquers death is choosing to return God's love by spreading God's love. That's the Bible story in one sentence.
Nov '11
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
Solzhenitsyn says,
If he suggests the ancients knew no fear of death, that fear of death is purely a feature of opulent modernity, I disagree. Mortality tormented the ancients no less than us--differently, but no less.
Wrestling with mortality is a permanent business of humans, almost the very definition of human: the only being at the same time both mortal and able to contemplate mortality.
Solzhenitsyn says,
Yet it was not some selfish modern, but a dead Greeek fellow who first insisted "man is the measure of all things."
When Solzhenitsyn says, we moderns have
does he think ancient polytheism superior to modern monotheism?
Maybe Solzhenitsyn's divide was less Ancient/Modern, than East/West.
Edited on February 23, 2012 at 8:03amMay '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
Christianity has many beautiful revelations for it's followers. One of them is forgiveness of sins. The other is the "living water" the Christ promises...life everlasting...not the limited life of human existence. In the case of the passing of dear family members, I am reminded of an analogy...of a ship that has passed beyond the horizon...but one that I shall once again make contact with someday.
I often find it sad when dealing with young people, in my work in education, that so many of them have rejected, or failed to embrace, a religious belief that points them to "life after death." No wonder they feel led to embrace so many selfish sensual pleasures and a hedonistic, self-centered lifestyle: they feel that when human death occurs, the light switch goes out and they cease to exist. How sad for them.
While I rejoice that they have a happier surprise ahead of them, they could be doing so much more good with their lives if they knew better. They could embrace good works beyond pleasing either their own fallacious worship of Eros or Gaia.
Edited on February 23, 2012 at 5:28amMar '11
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
I prefer the Druids' " from the stars we came, and to the stars we shall return" - it's more uplifting (and scientifically more accurate - dust is an intermediate step - as are stars, but on a longer timescale).
"A quantum fluctuation thou art, and to a quantum fluctuation shalt thou return" is better yet, but maybe too abstract.
The message is the same - we are temporary guests, here.
Edited on February 23, 2012 at 6:44amMay '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
I've been painting this week for an elderly couple, both in their nineties and kind as can be. In passing, the husband said he and his wife can't make it to church anymore, but they fall asleep every night listening to a CD of hymns. Hard to imagine a more sweet image.
Feb '12
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
What is it about death that bothers me so much?
Probably the hours.
- Woody Allen
May '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
It's funny how many drastic lifestyle changes people are willing to make to buy themselves (they hope) just ten more years. I don't get it. As a poet once said, "not a day I wish to see / that I have done all that may be." I hope for Heaven, but can't imagine there's ever a good time to die.
It's also interesting how much people worry about how they will die. Everyone wants to die peacefully in sleep. Are all the worries about those last moments actually about fear of death itself? Or do people really think a moment or even a year of pain is so terrible after many decades of comfortable life?
One's last moments do matter. Life is about choosing, and death forces our final answer. But fear of pain is different from fear of failing.
Oct '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
I know I've posted this before, but maybe it'll be new to a few of you:
Sad sons of the stormy fall,
No escape, you have to inflict and endure; surely it is time for you
To learn to touch the diamond within to the diamond outside,
Thinning your humanity a little between the invulnerable diamonds,
Knowing that your angry choices and hopes and terrors are in vain,
But life and death not in vain; and the world is like a flight of swans.
--Robinson Jeffers, from "Flight of Swans"
Feb '12
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
One thing I do know about my impending death is that I'll be in good company. Life is a magnificent mystery and that is why it is so hard to let go of. But the splender and great mysteries of the universe and its creator give me hope. Let no day pass therefore, wasted.
Aug '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
David Williamson
I prefer the Druids' " from the stars we came, and to the stars we shall return"...
How about this one?:
"Dust we are, though the dust of stars. And troubled by dreams."
Edited on February 23, 2012 at 2:05pmJun '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
My aunt died yesterday - seven months after her husband had passed. I received the news just before I left for church wednesday evening. She had lived a full life. It was her time.
I came home from church and went up to bed. My beloved wife was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. Both of our dogs were in bed with me. The little dog was dancing in front of my wife's pillow. I thought to myself, "Not yet ashes." This thing, life, still held little Otto's atoms in place. Less than fifty years from now we will all be dead but this moment of grace has been given to us. It is all so precious.
This is what Ash Wednesday means. We are all hurtling towards our deaths. There is nothing so valuable than the time we are given. Spend it well.
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
Aaron Miller:
It's also interesting how much people worry about howthey will die. Everyone wants to die peacefully in sleep. Are all the worries about those last moments actually about fear of death itself?
Yes, I think this is what the fear is about. Not the pain itself, but the impending extinction; being faced with knowing that you'll be lurching into the unknown.
Jun '10
Re: Solzhenitsyn on Mortality
Two quotes to ponder:
“[D]eath is distinctly an exciting moment.” [Chesterton (and I think he really believed it)]
“Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road that makes death a fulfillment.” [Dag Hammarskjold]